Level the DI Playing Field with Multi-Life

When it comes to the insurance industry, and specifically to how products are priced, men and women aren’t created equal.

Statistics prove that women live longer. So, when purchasing life insurance, they pay smaller premiums than men. Unfortunately, when it comes to disability insurance, that’s not the case.

All things being equal, a female will pay 30-50% more for a disability policy than her male counterpart. It’s because women are more likely to file a claim – not just for pregnancy, but for all types of claims.

The good news is that there is a solution. Multi-life. Most carriers offer some type of multi-life option, but I’m going to focus on Principal for this example. In addition to being one of the largest DI carriers in the market, they are also more flexible, and they offer unisex pricing options. To qualify as multi-life, they require policies to be placed on three or more people with a common employer. There is no requirement for the employer to contribute to the premium, although that’s certainly an option. In fact, the policies can be billed directly with no employer involvement.

Let’s use an example

Here we'll look at a 40-year-old female business owner in a white-collar occupation who lives in Indiana. For her policy, we’ll use a 90-day waiting period to age 65, and a $5,000 monthly benefit with residual. The premium for the policy, without any multi-life discounts, is $3,500 annually.

Now let’s assume that the client buys policies on two other employees. We just hit the magic number for making this a multi-life plan. Those two policies, after the discounts, can have annual premiums as low as $165 — which we can help you design. The client is paying a total of $330 per year for these two polices.

And now that the plan qualifies for multi-life, our client’s premium of $3,500 on her own policy is discounted to $2,300 annually. Her new premium, along with the $330 for her employees’ policies puts her total annual bill at $2,630. That’s an additional 25% savings, and her premium discount is locked in for the life of her policy — even if the other two policies are canceled later.

Buy more. Pay less.

I believe that’s what we call a win-win.

Your Ash DI team can help you structure a multi-life plan for male and female owners. The discount on the females is much more significant — it lowers the female rate to be similar to that of a male — but don’t let that stop you from considering multi-life plans regardless of gender.

Take a minute to consider small businesses you work with. If multi-life is a viable solution to protect them and their employees, let us know. We’re here to help.